WSET Delivers Local HD News With JVC Cameras

Allbritton Communications Co.’s ABC affiliate WSET Roanoke-Lynchburg, Va. (DMA  66), has transitioned to local HD news with new ProHD cameras from JVC Professional Products Co. The station recently purchased eight GY-HM790Us and eight GY-HM750Us, which will be used for studio and ENG work.

WSET is one of six Allbritton stations that is standardizing on JVC ProHD cameras for studio and ENG work. The new cameras are part of an overall transition to local HD news production for all stations in the group.

This summer, WSET connected three GY-HM790U cameras via fiber optic cable in the studio, avoiding the need for triax and additional cable bundles. “It was a huge quality upgrade for us in our studio,” said K.C. Spiron, WSET’s director of operations and engineering. “We get plenty of power to run the monitors we need and it works well.”

In September, WSET starting shooting ENG footage exclusively with its new ProHD camcorders. Spiron said the shooters quickly embraced the use of non-proprietary SDHC media cards and JVC’s native file recording technology, which provides ready-to-edit footage for the station’s Adobe Premiere CS5.5 NLE workstations.

“They love the ease of use and the flexibility. Focus Assist is a big help,” Spiron added. “From an engineering perspective, the quality is very good and they are very easy to configure. We were still tape-based until this switch, so this has vastly improved our workflow. We use the JVC ProHD Clip Manager [software] for logging as well.”

The shoulder-mount designd GY-HM750U delivers 1920×1080 images and can record HD footage in 720p, 1080p and 1080i, as well as SD footage (480i). Designed for ENG news, sports and other location shoots, it records native HD or SD footage in ready-to-edit file formats on low-cost SDHC memory cards. Plus, a new feature allows simultaneous recording to both SDHC cards for instant backup or client copy.